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Gone Fishin'
This story appears in the March 2000 issue of Entrepreneur. Subscribe »
When Sandra Hand, vice president of Virtual Voice corporation at the time, took the phone call that would ultimately lead her to walk away from the voice-messaging company where she'd spent 10 years of her life, her first thought was, "I'm pretty happy here."
But on the other end of the phone line was Dylan Marer, an entrepreneur's entrepreneur blessed with a gift of persuasion that makes Johnny Cochran look like a piker. The 32-year-old Marer had already launched one successful company, the $4 million Los Angeles-based Innovative Meetings and Events, and needed Hand to roll out his latest venture, BodyLogix.com in August 1999.
Marer wanted BodyLogix.com to crash the fledgling women's alternative health and exercise market with a bang, grabbing market share and creating a brand name in an industry that didn't have many. The key was getting people like Hand on board to steer the company out of port and guide it through the choppy seas of e-commerce. Good plan. But why would anyone with a modicum of sense leave a big, established company for a newer, smaller one with a risky future?
"I don't buy the notion that we're a small company or a new company," says Marer, who expects BodyLogix.com to bring in $38 million this year, "but I understand some people do. I think you can attract top people to a newer or smaller business by doing two things: paying them well and appealing to their sense of adventure. And that's what we did with Sandra."
For her part, Hand thought things were getting a little stale at her own job, and she was at a point in her life where she felt like taking on new challenges--not that she didn't want some guarantees first. "I'd be lying if I said money isn't a factor in going to work for a small company, especially a dot.com," she explains. "But we spend so much time at the office that you realize you want to be in a place you enjoy and where the work really challenges you."
Lured by Marer's offer of a healthy chunk of equity in BodyLogix.com, and by the company's cutting-edge concept, Hand agreed to climb aboard as Marer's new executive vice president. "When Dylan first approached me to come work for BodyLogix, I was intrigued by what the company would be doing and excited about the idea of slugging it out in the e-commerce market," she says. "As an executive, you want the money, you want the challenge and you want the opportunity to get involved with a company that has great long-term growth potential. When I looked at BodyLogix that way, it was actually a pretty easy decision to make."
Hotshot execs moving from stronger and more established companies to smaller, more nascent ones may not be a new concept, but it's one that's attracting more attention these days. Eyebrows were raised all over Wall Street last year when Lou Dobbs, president of CNN Financial News, left his high-profile job and moved over to Space.com, a space-travel and astronomy Web site with a much lower profile. Dobbs told reporters that space travel was his first love and he wanted to spend the rest of his working life up to his elbows in it.
Neither Hand nor Dobbs is alone in taking on new risks. Today more and more corporate heavy hitters are foregoing the showroom-floor-sized corner office and reserved parking privileges for the relative uncertainty of 70-hour weeks at shoe-box-sized offices where they may have to fight for prime parking spots with the rest of the staffers.
How are small businesses attracting such talent? Good financial packages--usually with a piece of the company included--big-time titles like CEO or COO, and a Braveheart-like call to arms that appeals to the Mel Gibson in most corporate big shots.
"I recently hired one of the highest-ranking executives in my industry," says Scott H. Korn, the 37-year-old founder, chairman and CEO of York Paper, an $80 million Eddystone, Pennsylvania-based paper-products company. "It took a heck of a lot to get him--enough equity in the company where he's set for life--but what sold him on us was the idea that he'll have as much freedom and flexibility as he can handle. As long, that is, as he produces."
Brian O'Connell is a Framingham, Massachusetts, freelance business writer who aspires to be a big-shot executive, or at least be married to one someday. His most recent book, Generation E: How Young Entrepreneurs are Changing the Corporate Landscape (Entrepreneur Press), was released in September 1999. He can be reached at email@example.com
Give 'Em What No One Else Can
While there's no lack of good executives looking for better deals, prying them from their existing jobs is not easy.
Some business owners find they have to give up more and more to lure talent away from the big guys. All the good executives are taken, it seems, and most are getting rich on stock options in the long-running bull market. One entrepreneur tells the story of wooing a big-time chief technology officer during a frenzied two-week period. Just when the business owner was set to reel her prize catch aboard, the executive's company announced it was going public, increasing the CTO's stock value by 75 percent overnight. Needless to say, the executive stayed right where he was.
In a sparkling economy, high-end recruiters say small companies have to be creative in landing the big fish. When pitching to potential management hires, it's a good idea to play the vanity card and let them know they're highly regarded in your industry. Then emphasize how likely it is they'll grow stale unless they take on greater risks.
When you do talk money, frame it in the context of a long-term deal so you'll have their talents on hand for a while. "It's got to be a long-term relationship, and you have to let them know up front," says Korn, who signs his top executives to big multiyear deals. "I try to stretch it out to 10 or 20 years so I know we're both in it for the long haul."
Don't be reluctant to embellish your company's freewheeling image. Smaller companies offer more flexibility and variety for new hires, who may feel stifled in their current jobs. "We try to match our company to what the executive does," explains 36-year-old John Mueller, owner of Idea Factory Inc., a $3 million bath-products company in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. "If we see a candidate who's tired of wearing a power suit, we let that person know we're a T-shirt-and-blue-jeans company. It sounds simplistic, but you should see the smiles on their faces."
Other entrepreneurs, recognizing that time is as big a commodity as cash, tempt would-be managers with flextime schedules and amped-up vacation packages. "Good people are used to having leverage," says 31-year-old Kristin Knight, founder, president and principal of Creative Assets Inc., a $14 million creative-recruitment company in Seattle. "So they expect the stock options and the big raise. Where you can beat the competition is on the time issue. If it takes an extra two weeks of vacation time to get them in your shop, then do it."
On-site perks don't hurt either, Knight adds. "We began having on-site masseuses to keep people happy."
Don't Let The Dot.com Faze You
As Sandra Hand's story at BodyLogix.com attests, top executives' eyes widen at the thought of working for dot.com companies. That's partly because there's always the chance they might earn more money than a Saudi oil sheik when the company goes public and partly because of the thrilling idea of riding in the front car of the fastest roller coaster around. The combination of cash and cachet can't be undersold. After all, there's a little Las Vegas in everyone.
"It's so easy to get caught up in the Web initial public offering craze," notes Ethan Winning, a Walnut Creek, California, expert on business growth trends and the author of the self-published book Labor Pains: Employer and Employee Rights and Obligations. "Everyone wants to work for the company that's going to become the next Yahoo!. That's fine if you're an owner of a small e-commerce business--trump that side of the mix all you want when you're recruiting.
"If you're running a non-technical company, you're not competing against the dot.com companies. Let them fight it out for themselves with the big signing bonuses and fat financial packages. You don't have to play that game." Even though the media plays up successful tech IPOs, most Internet stock IPOs never pan out. After all, more Internet start-ups fail than succeed. Non-Internet companies can compete with options like extended flextime and generous vacation packages.
Signing bonuses can do more harm than good in small companies, says Winning. Information in small businesses flows like beer at a frat party, and resentments can grow if too much of a company's money is targeted toward one individual. "Adding signing bonuses to the package is bad business," Winning explains. "If you give bonuses out, then you're going to have some disgruntled employees stewing about who didn't receive such a bonus. I tell the business owners I talk to, `Decide how much you can afford to pay in salary and stock options, and then walk away if a candidate wants all that and a bonus, too.' "
Another advantage an established small business has over start-up dot.coms is a track record. Management candidates can ask around and get a feel for your company. That's a big advantage when dealing with talented executives who don't like surprises. "One of the most important considerations for hiring top talent is your company's image," says Winning. "And more often than not, that image is conveyed by your current employees. If your employees speak highly of your company, and the management is involved with their employees' happiness and success, you have a better shot at landing a big recruit."
Workplace culture manifests itself in many forms. At Incentive Systems, an $8 million enterprise incentive compensation management firm based in Burlington, Massachusetts, the company's founder and CEO, Elizabeth Cobb, has bagged her share of top managers. On one day alone, Cobb landed a new CFO and a sales-and-strategic-alliances director. Her company's chief architect and co-founder was a lead developer of Lotus 1-2-3 and her new CTO developed the PowerSite Web software package at Powersoft. "In such a short time, we've succeeded in building a formidable team," explains the 46-year-old Cobb, who rolled out her company in June 1997.
Cobb, the first woman to run Honeywell's advanced engineering training program back in the 1970s, when female engineering directors were about as rare as Rush Limbaugh sightings at a hemp rally, credits her recruitment success to her company's motivation-based management techniques. "Recruiting top talent is at the heart of good business," she explains. "And getting good help is the same as getting new customers: You've got to motivate them."
Cobb believes the carrot-and-stick approach is the best way to attract new managers. But don't just dangle the carrot in front of their noses, she adds--let them grab it, taste it and ask for more.
But you're also trying to get job candidates to do the same things you want customers to do--buy into your company mission, Cobb says. "You've got to bend a lot to fit people's lifestyles into your system, but if they buy into what you're doing, the rest comes naturally."
It's What's Inside That Counts
A mistake many business owners often make is to grab executives simply because they had a fancy title at their old jobs. Just because somebody has "CTO" on their coffee mug doesn't mean he or she's a Mensa candidate. "You have to do your homework and do it thoroughly," advises Stever Robbins, an executive coach at VentureCoach.com, an entrepreneurial coaching firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "I've seen managers with big titles who were complete idiots. What happened was their high school buddy who made it big hired them and gave them a big title. But when you look a little closer, you find the owner didn't necessarily give them a great deal of responsibility."
In a tight executive job market, perhaps that's the strongest lesson of all. You can toss money around, you can jack up vacation times and you can even hire a masseuse--but if you pick the first big title you see and don't do your homework, you're going to be spending more time with that masseuse than anyone else on your staff.
Contact Sources
Christian & Timbers, http://www.ctnet.com
Creative Assets Inc., http://www.creativeassets.com
The Idea Factory, (800) 867-4673, firstname.lastname@example.com
Incentive Systems, http://www.incentivesystems.com
Ethan Winning, (800) 823-6366, http://www.ewin.com
York Paper, (800) 416-YORK, http://www.yorkpaper.com


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The Boy and I are having our weekly Starbucks School afternoon while The Girl counts her cookies at Girl Scouts.
Speaking of cookies, we are up to our eyeballs in them, and although it is fun and exciting, it is also a lot of work. I will be glad to be finished. I don't know how our wonderful cookie moms do it all... I would be completely overwhelmed.
Speaking of overwhelmed... I decided that social media was killing my ability to think, read, clean, pray, create and interact with those who I live life with on a daily basis. I still check-in from time to time (cos i still really love being in contact with all my friends!) but I'm trying to let (Facebook and Pinterest in particular) work for me, instead of me for it.
I can see the difference already. Since the first of the year I have read (and FINISHED!) four books. I haven't read four books in one month since Twitter and Facebook and all the medias in between became my every day "read". I am hoping that soon my brain will start thinking deeply again, and I will be able to write again. I've missed it.
I have worked on a few little crochet projects lately:
This is the start of another afghan.. it makes me so happy to be making Dahila's in the middle of winter ( although this winter has not been a true winter!).
Ok, gotta run... but I HAVE to show you this...
I don't know what this tree is, but it has the MOST beautiful pink blossoms on them. It makes my heart very happy... spring is nearly here!

subset: commoncrawl


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John asks, "What microphone should I use for podcasting? Should I look for dynamic or condenser and what models do you recommend for someone getting started?"
I believe John heard me talking about this recently on the MyMac Podcast #438 where I began to answer this question for Guy and Gaz.
For podcasting, I strongly prefer dynamic microphones over condensers. Both can work if used properly, but in the end you'll generally have an easier time with dynamics. The radio broadcast world has standardized on dynamic mics for the past handful of decades, too, and for good reason: most radio and podcast studios aren't exactly "good-sounding" rooms, and a properly-used dynamic mic naturally focuses on the signal pushed into it as opposed to condensers which tend to pick up a lot of ambient sounds, too.
Blue Yeti
The trick is that regardless of which mic you use, you'll need to employ some microphone technique. And by that I mean you want to be able to get right up close to the mic when you're talking in order to give you a nice, tight, recorded sound. Remember, your listeners will be hearing this in their own (potentially bouncy) environments, and that means you don't want to force them to listen to your bouncy-sounding room behind you, too. And if they're using headphones, they really don't want to hear your clangy room while trying to listen to your voice. The issue here is that getting up on the microphone requires you to be able to adjust the microphone's gain to compensate. You don't want to be up close only to have an over-driven sound. So you need some way of adjusting the input gain (that is, the amount of signal the microphone sends through). With most USB mics the only control you have is in the Sound System Preference pane, and while that can be good enough I tend to prefer a knob that I can adjust as I'm talking, but perhaps that's just because it's what I'm used to using.
Now that we've got the basics out of the way let's get to picking a microphone. Based on what I've said above (and to make it easy for all of us) it would seem we want an all-in-one dynamic microphone with on-board gain control that plugs in via USB. Unfortunately, to my knowledge, that doesn't exist (please comment if you know differently!). Nearly all USB-based microphones are of the condenser variety and that means we're forced to make a compromise. If you don't want to compromise you'll have to get a standard, XLR-based, dynamic mic and some sort of mixer or USB audio interface like the Shure X2u. In my main podcast studio this is the route I've gone, and I use a Heil PR 40 as my main microphone plugged in through a Tascam US-1641 USB Interface.
RØDE Podcaster
That said, there are two microphones that I've found over the years that work for me when I'm on the road and want to just have an all-in-one USB solution. The first is the RØDE Podcaster (US$229 from Amazon), a dynamic mic that also has headphone passthrough (which allows you to hear sound from the computer as well as your own voice directly from the mic). The one thing the Podcaster lacks is gain control — you have to do this in software and it works, but it's not perfect. Still, it's an excellent-sounding mic and I've done many podcasts from noisy/bouncy hotel rooms with no one the wiser.
The second option that I like is the Blue Yeti (not to be confused with the Yeti Pro, which is good for other applications, just not this one). Available for $93.22 from Amazon (and listing for $149) this is considerably more affordable than the Podcaster, but the Yeti is a condenser mic. However, it has an on-board gain control as well as an option for a very tight pattern that makes the Yeti an excellent podcast mic. It, too, has a headphone passthrough just like the podcaster. The Yeti has become my preferred travel companion simply because of its gain control. I don't like the sound quite as much as the Podcaster, but the convenience wins out for me. With the right tweaking I can usually make it so that most listeners can't tell the difference.
One other trick I'll mention that's helped us with Mac Geek Gab over the years: use a noise-gate (I use an outboard noise gate in the studio, and when traveling I use a software-based noise gate in Audio Hijack Pro as part of my recording chain). The point of a noise-gate is that it completely mutes your signal unless you're talking, which is great if you've got a Skype-based co-host or guests. No reason for people to hear whatever background noise you might have in your room while someone else is speaking.
Good luck... and happy recording!


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Novice programmers, or those migrating from other languages, usually find the JavaScript language fairly accessible, with plenty of available help and advice on how to get started developing programs. Unfortunately, the many articles and tutorials on coding rarely give much advice on what to do when code doesn't run correctly. In this article, Phil Ballard, author of Sams Teach Yourself JavaScript in 24 Hours, 5th Edition, introduces some simple but valuable methods for analyzing and debugging your JavaScript code, to make your programming time more productive and less frustrating.From the author of
Whether you just started out in JavaScript programming or are a seasoned coder, you'll no doubt have spent time seeking out gremlins in your JavaScript source code. The process of locating and correcting bugs is known as debugging, and it can be one the most tricky and frustrating parts of the development process.
The sort of errors that can crop up in your code usually conform to one of three types:
- Syntax Errors: These can include typographical and spelling errors, missing or mismatched quote marks, missing or mismatched parentheses/braces or case-sensitivity errors.
- Runtime Errors: These errors occur when the JavaScript interpreter tries to do something it can't make sense of. Examples include trying to treat a string as if it were a numerical value, or trying to divide a number by zero.
- Faulty Program Logic: These mistakes don't always generate error messages—the code may be perfectly valid—but your script doesn't do what you want it to. These are usually problems associated with algorithms or logical flow within the script.
This article aims to offer some straightforward tips and suggestions for debugging your code, making your programming hours more pleasurable and productive.
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As if Australians didn't have enough to worry about from their deadly fauna, now their flora are out to get them as well. The town of Warragul, Victoria, houses a 120-year-old bunya pine whose pine cones are the size of watermelons. The behemoths weigh up to 10 kilograms each, and, the local council warns, can leave a nasty crack in your head if you happen to be under one when it falls. So if you don't intend to wear a helmet everywhere you go, it's a good idea to look up occasionally.
Warning over watermelon-sized pine cones [ABC News via mental_floss]


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Unadjusted Kaplan-Meier estimates of time until first medication for patients with newly diagnosed chronic disease, above and below the median out-of-pocket (OOP) index, 1997 to 2002. The median OOP index was 272. Below median includes patients in plans with an OOP index lower than 272. Above median includes patients in plans with an OOP index of 272 or higher.
Effect of doubling copayments on the initiation of drug therapy for patients with newly diagnosed chronic disease. An out-of-pocket cost (OOP) index of 205 roughly corresponded to a 1-tier $5/$10 retail/mail-order copayment plan (actual OOP index, 206.7). An OOP index of 410 roughly corresponded to a 3-tier $5-$15-$20/$10-$20-$30 retail/mail-order copayment plan (actual OOP index, 425.7). Both values were well within the range observed in the sample.
Effect of doubling copayments on the initiation of drug therapy for patients with newly diagnosed chronic disease with and without prior drug use. An out-of-pocket cost (OOP) index of 205 roughly corresponded to a 1-tier $5/$10 retail/mail-order copayment plan (actual OOP index, 206.7). An OOP index of 410 roughly corresponded to a 3-tier $5-$15-$20/$10-$20-$30 retail/mail-order copayment plan (actual OOP index, 425.7). Both values were well within the range observed in the sample. For patients with newly diagnosed hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, and diabetes, 26.1%, 10.4%, and 12.9% of each respective sample had no prescription drug use in the year prior to diagnosis.
Customize your JAMA Network experience by selecting one or more topics from the list below.
Solomon MD, Goldman DP, Joyce GF, Escarce JJ. Cost Sharing and the Initiation of Drug Therapy for the Chronically Ill. Arch Intern Med. 2009;169(8):740–748. doi:10.1001/archinternmed.2009.62
© 2020
Increased cost sharing reduces utilization of prescription drugs, but little evidence demonstrates how this reduction occurs or the factors associated with price sensitivity.
We conducted a retrospective cohort study of older adults with employer-provided drug coverage from 1997 to 2002 from 31 different health plans. We measured the time until initiation of medical therapy for 17 183 patients with newly diagnosed hypertension, diabetes, or hypercholesterolemia.
For all study conditions, higher copayments were associated with delayed initiation of therapy. In survival models, doubling copayments resulted in large reductions in the predicted proportion of patients initiating pharmacotherapy at 1 and 5 years after diagnosis: for hypertension, 54.8% vs 39.9% at 1 year and 81.6% vs 66.2% at 5 years (P < .001); for hypercholesterolemia, 40.2% vs 31.1% at 1 year and 64.3% vs 53.8% at 5 years (P < .002); and for diabetes, 45.8% vs 40.0% at 1 year and 69.3% vs 62.9% at 5 years (P < .04). However, patients' rate of initiation and sensitivity to copayments strongly depended on their prior experience with prescription drugs. Those without prior drug use (26.1%, 10.4%, and 12.9%) initiated later (833, >1170, and >1402 days later in median time until initiation) and were far more price sensitive (increase of 34.5%, 20.1%, and 27.2% remaining untreated after 5 years when copayments doubled) than those with a history of drug use among patients with newly diagnosed hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, and diabetes, respectively. These results were robust to a wide range of sensitivity analyses.
High cost sharing delays the initiation of drug therapy for patients newly diagnosed with chronic disease. This effect is greater among patients who lack experience with prescription drugs. Policy makers and physicians should consider the effects of benefits design on patient behavior to encourage the adoption of necessary care.
In the past decade, health plans have responded to rising prescription drug costs by implementing more restrictive insurance benefits, the hallmark of which has been increased cost sharing (ie, "copayments"), multi-tier formularies, and mandatory generic substitution.1 Several studies have demonstrated that these new arrangements reduce overall drug utilization and expenditures2-4 and that the chronically ill are sensitive to out-of-pocket (OOP) costs.5,6 However, detailed mechanisms outlining how these reductions occur are lacking.
The interruption of drug therapy can have negative health consequences for the chronically ill,7-11 particularly for elderly patients, who have the highest rates of chronic disease and prescription drug use.12-15 Studies measuring the effect of pharmacy benefit's design on drug treatment for the chronically ill are inconsistent,3,5,6,16-21 but surveys find cost to be the leading reason why elderly patients do not fill prescriptions, skip doses, or take smaller doses, followed by other causes, such as medication adverse effects and beliefs about whether drugs improve health.22 Most empirical studies of cost sharing have examined aggregate measures of utilization, such as total expenditures or days supplied, without explanations of how patients adjust their regimens. Although several studies suggest that price sensitivity depends on a drug's therapeutic class,5,21,23,24 and that increased cost sharing may decrease "nonessential" drug use more than "essential" drug use,5,20,25-29 few studies have dissected the multiple mechanisms by which patients reduce their utilization in the face of higher cost sharing.
To fill this gap, this study examines whether cost sharing affects the initiation of drug treatment for patients newly diagnosed with chronic disease. A sophisticated understanding of the effects of drug benefits is crucial for policy makers, who, rather than applying blunt tools to control utilization, need to target those most at risk for the potentially harmful effects of utilization reductions.
The RAND Human Subjects Protection Committee ruled that this research was exempt from institutional review board approval.
We linked enrollment files, pharmacy claims, medical claims, and the salient features of health plan benefits for retirees of 15 large employers from 1997 to 2002. Each employer offered 1 or more health plans to its elderly retirees for a total of 59 health plans covering 399 034 retirees. All but 2 employers that offered multiple health plans provided a single drug benefit to their retirees, such that retirees had no choice of drug benefits. The content of the claims files have been described elsewhere.3,5 The eText, eFigure 1, eFigure 2, and eTable provide more details on the construction of our longitudinal data sets from the raw claims (http://www.archinternmed.com). Resulting data sets included 31 health plans (plan-year combinations) covering 272 474 unique persons.
Our algorithms to identify patients with newly diagnosed hypertension (HTN), hypercholesterolemia (CHOL), and diabetes (DIAB) from International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM) codes were designed to ensure that "rule-out" diagnoses were excluded from the sample. We required patients to be observed for at least their first year in the data without any outpatient or inpatient physician visits with an ICD-9-CM code for the chronic disease (hereafter diagnosis) and without filling any disease-specific medications. Subsequent to this washout period, we required that they have the diagnosis of interest recorded during a physician visit on at least 2 occasions, the first of which must have occurred prior to or the same day as their first disease-specific medication. The first diagnosis was the index date on which the patient was considered newly diagnosed with the condition (eText, eFigure 1, eFigure 2, and eTable). Studies that examine the validity of using claims data to identify patients with chronic disease suggest our algorithm would yield specificity levels of 0.85 to 0.90.30,31
Disease-specific medications were identified by matching the pharmaceutical claims to the Redbook Database. Manual verifications and edits were completed by the authors with clinical experience (M.D.S. and J.J.E.). Medications for HTN included angiotensin receptor blockers, angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors, β-blockers, calcium channel blockers, thiazide diuretics, potassium-sparing diuretics, α1-inhibitors, α2-agonists, and vasodilators. Medications for DIAB included insulins, sulfonylureas, metformin, thiazolidinediones, and α-glucosidase blockers. Medications for CHOL included statins, bile acid sequestrants, nicotinic acid, and fibric acid derivatives.
The primary outcome measure was the time until initiation of prescription drug therapy, defined as the number of days between a patient's first diagnosis and the filling of the first disease-specific prescription. Because patients were observed from 2 to 6 years and may have been diagnosed at any time after their first year in the data, the outcome is right-censored (ie, it was possible that patients who were not observed initiating drug therapy may have begun therapy after we ceased to observe them).
The main explanatory variable in our analysis was an index that measured the generosity of a plan's prescription drug benefits. Multi-tier cost-sharing structures, in which drugs are separated into different groups with different copayments, are now the standard for most prescription drug plans. For example, patients might pay $5 for a 30-day supply for all drugs (1-tier plan), or $5 for generics and $10 for brand-name drugs (2-tier), or $5 for generics, $10 for preferred brand-name drugs, and $25 for nonpreferred brand-name drugs (3-tier). Many plans also offer discounts for purchases made through mail-order or in-network pharmacies. These complexities, in addition to mandatory generic substitution rules and restrictive formularies, mean that the price a consumer will pay for a given drug depends not only on its tier but also on where it is dispensed. To capture these features, we developed a single index that summarized the average annual OOP expense that members of a standard sample would have paid for their prescription drugs had they faced the copayments and restrictions of each plan. This OOP index is similar to what would be calculated for the medical consumer price index, but it is specific to each plan. Details on calculating the OOP index have been described elsewhere5 and are included in eFigure 2. The OOP index ranked plans by their cost-sharing structure in a manner consistent with their absolute and relative copayment levels. We also calculated separate OOP indices for disease-specific medications to measure the OOP burden for specific drug classes, but these indices were highly correlated with the overall OOP index value and yielded the same results.
Covariates in the models included indicators for age categories; an indicator for sex; median household income in the zip code of residence; a categorical variable for urban residence; indicators for the year of the index date to control for secular time trends; selected outpatient medical benefits to include an exogenous measure of outpatient medical utilization; and indicators for 15 comorbid conditions as health status controls, identified by ICD-9-CM codes from physician visits in the year prior to a patient's index date. Finally, we included an indicator variable for any prescription medication use in the year prior to the index date and, in some models, the interaction of this indicator and the OOP index, to assess whether prior use of prescription drugs affected time until initiation of drug therapy and price responsiveness.
Because the data were structured in a time-to-event framework, we used survival analysis techniques. For unadjusted analyses, we used Kaplan-Meier methods and log-rank tests to compare survival functions. For adjusted analyses, we estimated 6 multivariate Cox proportional hazards models. For each of the 3 study conditions, we estimated a main effects and interacted model. The main effects models included the variables described, and the interacted models included the interaction between the OOP index and indicator prior drug use. To make the results easier to understand, we used the multivariate models to predict the effect of doubling copayments on the time to initiation for each study condition. For the predictions, we chose to double an OOP index value near the 25th percentile for the plans in our sample (OOP index = 205), which corresponded to a 1-tier $5/$10 retail/mail-order copayment plan. This ensured that both the baseline and doubled copayment values for the predictions corresponded to OOP index values that were within sample (OOP index values of 205 and 410).
We conducted multiple sensitivity analyses to assess the robustness of our results. First, to ensure that rule-out diagnoses were not affecting our findings, we tested the models using restrictive inclusion criteria designed to produce samples with more homogeneous and severe disease, including samples that required patients to have at least 3 outpatient physician visits for the disease condition after diagnosis, and required that the second and third visits be at least 30 days apart. Second, we examined whether the type of drug used prior to initial diagnosis changed our model outcomes. Specifically, we separated the effect of prior medications used to treat conditions that contributed additional cardiovascular risk (defined as drugs for HTN, CHOL, DIAB, coronary artery disease, congestive heart failure, and vascular disease) from remaining medications. Third, we examined patients who used a small supply of medications in the prior year—as little as 30 days worth of medications—as well as those patients who used only antibiotics in the prior year. Finally, we estimated models that included controls for physician visits; examined alternative definitions for comorbid conditions; excluded the oldest subjects (age >80 years); and excluded plans requiring coinsurance, the least generous plans in our sample.
Table 1 summarizes the characteristics of our 3 study samples, which included 7879, 6450, and 4486 patients with newly diagnosed HTN, CHOL, and DIAB, respectively. Little overlap existed between the 3 samples; together, the analyses included 17 183 unique patients (Table 1). Within each sample, however, the study conditions were the most frequent comorbid conditions in each others' sample among preexisting conditions that contributed additional cardiovascular risk. The mean (SD) duration of observation after diagnosis was 877 (540) days for HTN, 930 (544) days for CHOL, and 799 (533) days for DIAB. Age was similar across samples; for all conditions, nearly half of patients were between ages 65 and 74 years (46.3% for HTN, 54.1% for CHOL, 47.5% for DIAB). The samples included more women than men; as age increased, the proportion of men decreased. Most patients used at least 1 other medication in the year prior to the index date, but a substantial proportion from each group had no prior prescription drug use (26.1% for HTN, 10.4% for CHOL, and 12.9% for DIAB). Cardiovascular drugs, central nervous system drugs, and hormone and/or synthetic treatments were the most commonly used drugs in the year prior to diagnosis, accounting for 52% of prescriptions.
Overall, the mean (SD) OOP index value at the plan level was 305 (118), with an interquartile range of 220 to 370. Three-tier plans were the most prevalent in the sample and included the largest share of each sample's patients (Table 2). In addition, 3-tier plans were, on average, the most generous plans, as measured by the OOP index. This was due to two factors. First, 3-tier plans had lower copayments for generic drugs (vs 1- and 2-tier plans) and preferred brand drugs (vs 2-tier plans) at retail pharmacies and lower copayments at mail-order pharmacies across all tiers (vs 1- and 2-tier plans). Second, mail-order copayments were higher in 1- and 2-tier plans than in 3-tier plans. The 5 coinsurance plans were the least generous plans and had flat coinsurance rates of 25% (n = 2), or 2-tier rates of 20% and 45% (n = 1) or 35% and 60% (n = 2).
Table 3 lists examples of pharmacy benefits and OOP index values for plans in the lower, median, and upper percentiles of the OOP index in our sample. Several formulations of plans, including 1-, 2-, and 3-tier plans, yielded OOP index values near those used for our predictions (OOP indexes of 205 and 410). As noted, the OOP index depended on the magnitude of both retail pharmacy and mail-order cost-sharing arrangements.
Figure 1 displays the Kaplan-Meier survival estimates for the number of days until a patient's first prescription for their newly diagnosed HTN, CHOL, or DIAB. The figure separates survival functions for patients in plans above and below the median OOP index. For all conditions, the rate of initiation was high in the first several months after diagnosis; subsequently, the rate of initiation slowed. Log-rank tests showed that for each condition, survival functions for patients in high- and low-OOP index groups were significantly different: P < .001 for HTN; P < .001 for CHOL; and P = .04 for DIAB. Thus, in the unadjusted data, higher cost sharing was associated with delayed initiation of drug therapy. At 5 years after diagnosis, the percentage (95% confidence interval) of patients remaining untreated with medications in our sample was 21.5% (19.9%-23.1%) for HTN, 36.0% (34.3%-37.8%) for CHOL, and 32.5% (30.1%-34.9%) for DIAB.
Figure 2 shows that doubling copayments resulted in large differences in the predicted time until initiation for all study conditions. When copayments doubled, the predicted percentage of patients with newly diagnosed HTN initiating pharmacotherapy fell from 54.8% to 39.9% at 1 year and from 81.6% to 66.2% at 5 years (P < .001). For patients with newly diagnosed CHOL, the proportion initiating pharmacotherapy fell from 40.2% to 31.1% at 1 year and from 64.3% to 53.8% at 5 years (P < .002). For patients with newly diagnosed DIAB, initiation fell from 45.8% to 40.0% at 1 year and 69.3% to 62.9% at 5 years (P = .04). The difference in the median number of days until pharmacotherapy that resulted from doubling copayments was substantial for all study conditions (244 vs 776 days for HTN; 766 vs 1382 days for CHOL; and 527 vs 813 days for DIAB).
Figure 3 demonstrates that the rate of initiation of drug therapy and the effect of doubling copayments depended on a patient's history of prescription drug use. Compared with patients with no drug use in the year prior to the index date, patients with any drug use in that period initiated pharmacotherapy earlier and were much less price sensitive. For example, holding cost-sharing levels constant at the lower of our 2 predicted levels (OOP index, 205), the percentage of patients initiating drug therapy by 1 year after diagnosis was much larger among patients with a history of prior drug use for all study conditions: 60.7% vs 40.3% for HTN (P < .001); 41.9% vs 21.0% for CHOL (P < .001); and 48.4% vs 30.4% for DIAB (P < .001).
Doubling copayments among patients with a history of drug use resulted in small differences in the rate of initiation, and the model yielded statistically significant differences only for patients with newly diagnosed HTN or CHOL: 60.7% vs 54.4% at 1 year for HTN (P = .02); 42.0% vs 36.3% at 1 year for CHOL (P = .03); and 48.5% vs 48.0% at 1 year for DIAB (P = .85). By contrast, among patients without a history of drug use, the effect of doubling copayments resulted in large, statistically significant differences in survival functions for all study conditions: 40.3% vs 16.6% at 1 year for HTN (P < .001); 21.1% vs 9.5% at 1 year for CHOL (P < .002); and 30.5% vs 12.9% at 1 year for DIAB (P < .001).
We tested more homogeneous samples of higher disease severity; different types and quantities of drugs used in the prior year; various definitions of comorbid conditions; added controls for physician visits; exclusions of the oldest patients; and coinsurance plans (data not shown). None of these sensitivity analyses appreciably changed our model results.
Previous work has established that the chronically ill are sensitive to the cost of prescription drugs. Our study looked at 1 component of utilization: the initiation of drug therapy after diagnosis. We found that increased cost sharing delays the initiation of medications to treat newly diagnosed chronic disease, suggesting that OOP costs may prevent patients from initiating medically necessary care.
In addition, we found that the initiation of drug therapy and sensitivity to prices depends on a patient's experience with prescription drug use. Relative to those without experience, patients with experience using prescription drugs were less price-sensitive and adopted therapy earlier, suggesting that patients differ in their willingness to initiate prescription drug therapy. For some patients, an initial resistance against treatment may be reduced once experience using prescription drugs is established. We found no threshold effect for the number of prior or concurrent medications at which the results of our models changed. Thus, our data suggest that OOP costs may prevent patients from initiating treatment—which could negatively impact health outcomes—but that patient sensitivity to prices strongly depends on whether patients have experience using prescription drugs.
Most prescription drug initiation occurred soon after diagnosis, with a subsequent slowing in the rate of initiation. Also, the effect of cost sharing on the rate of initiation was largest soon after diagnosis, but declined over time. However, the price sensitivity of patients without prescription drug experience declined less rapidly than for those with drug experience, indicating the persistent effect that increased copayments had in this population—a potential indication of a preference against drug therapy.
Our survival estimates were consistent with epidemiologic studies from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) III10 and other sources that estimate the proportion of patients who are aware they have a medical condition but remain untreated.12,13,32-44
In our study, the proportion of newly diagnosed patients who had not initiated anti-HTN, anti-CHOL, or anti-DIAB drug therapy by 5 years was 21.5%, 36.0%, and 32.5%, respectively. Consistent with our data, a variety of studies indicate that the proportion of patients aware of their hypertension but without drug treatment ranges from 8% to 68%.32-39,43 In the Framingham Heart Study,43 68.3% of patients with newly diagnosed HTN had not initiated antihypertensive therapy by 4 years, including 53.9% of those with stage 2 hypertension at baseline,43 and recent estimates range from 8% in a Veterans Affairs institution population34 to 38% to 55% in a community population.35
Untreated CHOL among those aware of their condition is a well-documented and chronic problem. Our estimate of the proportion diagnosed but untreated by 5 years is at the lower end of most population-based estimates, which range from 25% to 66%.32,36,41,42,45,46
Among patients diagnosed with DIAB, estimates of the proportion without drug treatment range from 8% to 47%47-49; recent analyses of NHANES data yield estimates ranging from 19% to 28.6%.32,36,50-52 In fact, 23.2% of patients with DIAB who survived a myocardial infarction or stroke, a group likely to be hypervigilant about controlling cardiovascular risk factors, did not use antidiabetic medications.50 Although our estimate of the proportion of patients newly diagnosed with DIAB who remained untreated after 5 years was slightly higher than NHANES estimates, NHANES subjects carried their diagnoses for 2 to 3 times longer than our 5-year follow-up period,32 and the proportion of untreated patients with DIAB increases with age.47,49
There are several limitations to our study. First, our sample may not be generalizable to a younger population. However, Medicare Part D has increased the proportion of elderly retirees who have prescription drug insurance. Thus, our results are particularly relevant for federal policy makers setting standards for Medicare Part D insurance packages.
Second, we could not completely control for selection of drug benefits. However, for all but 2 employers in the sample, employees had no choice of drug benefits, minimizing the possibility that employees selected plans suited to their anticipated needs, and patients with these 2 employers accounted for less than 2.5% of the sample. Excluding these patients did not change our results. Third, despite controls for comorbidities, disease severity may differ between patients with and without prior drug experience.
Although administrative data do not contain detailed clinical information contained in medical charts, our sensitivity analyses examining more homogeneous and severe disease did not change our findings. One initial treatment option for patients newly diagnosed with less severe disease is to initiate nonpharmaceutical therapy such as diet modification and exercise. However, there was no a priori reason that disease severity was correlated with benefit generosity, since almost no patients in our study had a choice of drug benefits plans. Furthermore, analysis of the NHANES data has shown that patients diagnosed with hypertension without pharmacologic treatment have, for example, disease severe enough to warrant treatment (systolic blood pressure >140 mm Hg).10
Finally, although the data are a few years old, the phenomena studied here are likely to be generalizable and enduring ones. Our results suggest a novel distinction between groups of patients, some of whom are price-sensitive to prescription drugs and others who are not. Although most patients in our sample had experience using prescription drugs, the large impact of cost sharing on those without experience make this population a prime target for interventions to encourage the adoption of appropriate treatment, particularly for patients newly diagnosed with diseases that contribute cardiovascular risk. Future research should explore the mechanisms underlying our results, such as the factors that may influence the effect of cost sharing within specific patient populations, and should examine the health outcomes of varying times to initiation of drug therapy for chronic disease.
Our findings have implications for policy makers designing insurance benefits and for physicians treating patients with chronic disease. First, these results raise concerns about high cost-sharing levels for elderly, insured patients without experience using prescription drugs. Based on our findings, high cost-sharing levels could be a barrier to treatment for this population and possibly result in poor health outcomes. Physicians should also heed these findings when treating patients with newly diagnosed HTN, CHOL, or DIAB; those without experience with pharmacologic therapy may be less likely to initiate prescribed treatments and may be very sensitive to cost-sharing levels.
More broadly, these results add to the growing consensus that our reliance on blunt instruments to influence utilization, such as formularies and tiered copayments, which are primarily used to manage cost, need to be updated with more sophisticated tools that take into account therapeutic need as well as patients' complex responses to insurance benefits.53,54 For example, recent evidence indicates that among patients who initiated new medications for treatment of chronic disease, adherence is poorer for those who begin with high copayments than for those who begin with lower copayments that gradually increase.55 This suggests that new users are likely to be more price sensitive than continuing users and is congruent with our finding that patients with prescription drug experience are less price-sensitive. Lessons such as these need to be incorporated into benefits design to ensure that patients who require medical therapy are not discouraged from initiating treatment.
Correspondence: Matthew D. Solomon, MD, PhD, Stanford University School of Medicine, Department of Medicine, S101 (m/c 5109), 300 Pasteur Dr, Stanford, CA 94305 (email@example.com).
Author Contributions: Dr Solomon had full access to all of the data in the study and takes responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis. Study concept and design: Solomon, Goldman, Joyce, and Escarce. Acquisition of data: Solomon, Goldman, Joyce, and Escarce. Analysis and interpretation of data: Solomon, Goldman, Joyce, and Escarce. Drafting of the manuscript: Solomon. Critical revision of the manuscript for important intellectual content: Solomon, Goldman, Joyce, and Escarce. Statistical analysis: Solomon, Goldman, Joyce, and Escarce. Obtained funding: Solomon. Administrative, technical, and material support: Solomon. Study supervision: Solomon, Goldman, Joyce, and Escarce.
Accepted for Publication: November 3, 2008.
Financial Disclosure: Dr Goldman has received honoraria and consulting income from Amgen, Genentech, and UnitedHealth.
Funding/Support: This research was supported by grant R03 HS013869-01 from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, Maryland, with additional funding from the California HealthCare Foundation, Oakland. Data were provided by Ingenix Inc, Eden Prairie, Minnesota.
Role of the Sponsor: Neither the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality nor California HealthCare Foundation had any authority over the design or conduct of this study; the collection, analysis, preparation, or interpretation of the data; or the preparation of the manuscript.
Additional Information: The RAND Corporation is solely responsible for this article's content.
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Springtime in Chicago: Little Tuffy Frolics with the Big Guys
Well, springtime has finally arrived in Chicago, and Little Tuffy gets to frolic with his big bestie, Miss Olive, at the Wiggly Field doggie park in Chicago's Lincoln Park. And when some of the other big guys think about picking on Little Tuffy, he's up for a little bit of play-fighting that teaches them not to mess around with the little guys!!
Springtime Frolics: Little Tuffy and Big Miss Olive
Springtime Frolics: Little Tuffy Takes on the Big Guys
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BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — A Georgia woman said Friday a teenager trying to rob her at gunpoint asked "Do you want me to kill your baby?" before he fatally shot her 13-month-old son in the head.
BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — A Georgia woman said Friday a teenager trying to rob her at gunpoint asked "Do you want me to kill your baby?" before he fatally shot her 13-month-old son in the head.
Sherry West wept while she told The Associated Press that she pleaded with the gunman and a younger accomplice who approached her Thursday morning while she walked near their home in coastal Brunswick.
"He asked me for money and I said I didn't have it," she said. "When you have a baby, you spend all your money on babies. They're expensive. And he kept asking and I just said 'I don't have it.' And he said, 'Do you want me to kill your baby?' And I said, 'No, don't kill my baby!'"
Police were combing school records and canvassing neighborhoods searching for the pair. While police have said the two boys were between the ages of 10 and 15, the mother says she believes the younger boy was as young as 5 years old.
She said the teen fired four shots, the first into the ground. West didn't see a shell casing ejected, and said she assumed the gun wasn't real.
Then he fired at her head and the bullet grazed her left ear — she has a small scab and bruising there. He fired again and shot her in the left leg above the knee. "I didn't know I was hurt."
"The boy proceeded to go around to the stroller and he shot my baby in the face," she said. "And then he just shoved me when I started screaming and he ran down London Street with the little boy."
Police spokesman Todd Rhodes gave few details about the investigation Friday, but said no weapon has been found and that investigators were checking school attendance records for leads.
Several people in the neighborhood called 911 after they heard the gunshots fired, but Rhodes said investigators believed that the mother was the only witness to what happened.
"Understand this: There is no clear motive right now," he said.
He urged anyone with information to call Brunswick police. There is a $10,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction.
The mother lives in a rented house in the city's Old Town historic district. Beverly Anderson's husband owns the property and she said West has lived there for six or seven years.
"We're just very sorry about what happened and very aghast that something could happen in our little neighborhood," Anderson said. "It's a quiet, safe little neighborhood."
Anderson said people walk up and down the street, children walk to school and families are frequently outdoors. "It's scared everybody," she said. "They don't feel so safe outside."
She said West stayed home to care for her baby, who was often spotted in his mother's arms.
"The house has a front porch with a swing and we'd see him out on the swing with his mother," Anderson said. "He was a happy, cheerful baby."
It's not the mother's first loss of a child to violence. Sherry West said her 18-year-old son, Shaun Glassey, was killed in New Jersey in 2008. She still has a newspaper clipping from the time.
Glassey was killed with a steak knife in March 2008 during an attack involving several other teens on a dark street corner in Gloucester County, N.J., according to news reports from the time.
"He and some other boys were going to ambush a kid," Bernie Weisenfeld, a spokesman for the Gloucester County prosecutor's office, told the AP Friday.
Glassey was armed with a knife, but the 17-year-old target of the attack was able to get the knife away from him "and Glassey ended up on the wrong end of the knife," Weisenfeld recalled.
Prosecutors decided the 17-year-old would not be charged because they determined that he acted in self-defense.
Associated Press Writer Christina A. Cassidy in Atlanta and news researcher Monika Mathur in New York contributed to this report.


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As you may have heard, October is Fair Trade month. Here at Art of Tea, we are committed to sourcing Fair Trade teas whenever possible, and proud to offer a range of Fair Trade certified teas. Ultimately, our goal is for each and every one of our teas and our tea blend ingredients to be sourced as sustianably and fairly as possible.
At Art of Tea, Fair Trade isn't just a business strategy. Four years ago, we got certified as a Fair Trade company by TransFair USA because we think that Fair Trade tea is about making this world a better place than the way we found it. To share our viewpoint with you, our founder Steve documented just a few of the ways in which Fair Trade has benefited a tea-producing community in China, with a new video on Fair Trade tea. See for yourself what Fair Trade means to the tea producers in a town near Wuyi Shan in Fujian.
Some of our best-selling teas (including Caramelized Pear, Egyptian Chamomile and Velvet Tea) are Fair Trade, so it's possible that you're already drinking Fair Trade tea without even knowing it. If those teas have piqued your interest in trying more Fair Trade teas, or if you simply feel that opting for Fair Trade tea is the right thing to do, then we think you'll be interested in trying our new Fair Trade Tea Sampler. It includes four delicious Fair Trade tea samples (Jasmine Reserve, Caramelized Pear, Tali's Masala Chai and Velvet Tea) totaling about 70 servings of tea. If you're interested in spreading your passion for Fair Trade, it also makes a great gift.


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Departments: Any units with open positions are available to New Graduate or Newly Licensed Registered Nurses.
Location: Geisinger Wyoming Valley – Wilkes Barre, PA
Work Schedule: Days/Evenings/Nights- All shifts available based on department needs
Work Type: Full Time - Every other weekend and every other holiday
· Are you a graduate nurse who wants to strengthen your clinical and leadership skills?
· Are you looking for support from mentors and role models who are passionate about providing high-quality care?
If so, our Nurse Residency and Nursing Fellowship Programs offer the ideal orientation process for recent graduate nurses considering a career in a nursing care specialty. This specialized program provides a strong foundation with a full complement of didactic and clinical experiences needed to develop competency.
All applicants must meet the following requirements prior to start:
· Graduate of an approved RN nursing program.
· Current RN licensure in Pennsylvania or have a practice permit
NOTE: All selected candidates must take and pass NCLEX within 60 days of hire.
Perhaps just as important, from senior management on down, we encourage an atmosphere of collaboration, cooperation and collegiality.
If you want to be part of the team that America is watching, contact us today!
Kelly Frazee
Talent Acquisition Specialist
Human Resources
OUR PURPOSE & VALUES:Everything we do is about caring for our patients, our members, our students, our Geisinger family and our communities. KINDNESS: We strive to treat everyone as we would hope to be treated ourselves. EXCELLENCE: We treasure colleagues who humbly strive for excellence. LEARNING: We share our knowledge with the best and brightest to better prepare the caregivers for tomorrow. INNOVATION: We constantly seek new and better ways to care for our patients, our members, our community, and the nation.
GEISINGER WYOMING VALLEY MEDICAL CENTER: (GWV),located in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., is an acute care hospital that is licensed for 274 beds, and houses the only Level II Trauma center in Luzerne County. The campus includes the Frank M. and Dorothea Henry Cancer Center, The Richard and Marion Pearsall Heart Hospital, the Janet Weis Children's Hospital Pediatric Unit, a transplant program and the Brain & Spine Tumor Institute. Geisinger South Wilkes-Barre is GWV's ambulatory campus.
ABOUT GEISINGER: Geisinger is a physician-led health system comprised of approximately 30,000 employees, including nearly 1,600 employed physicians, 13 hospital campuses, two research centers, and a 583,000-member health plan Geisinger is nationally recognized for innovative practices and quality care. Geisinger serves more than 3 million people in central, south-central and northeast Pennsylvania and also in southern New Jersey with the addition of National Malcolm Baldridge Award recipient AtlantiCare, A member of Geisinger. In 2017, the Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine became the newest member of the Geisinger Family.
We offer healthcare benefits for full time and part time positions from day one, including vision, dental and domestic partners.* Perhaps just as important, from senior management on down, we encourage an atmosphere of collaboration, cooperation and collegiality. For more information, visit www.geisinger.org, or connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter.
** Does not qualify for J-1 waiver. We are an Affirmative Action, Equal Opportunity Employer Women and Minorities are Encouraged to Apply. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment and will not be discriminated against on the basis of disability or their protected veteran status.
*Domestic partner benefits not applicable at Geisinger Holy Spirit.


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Open the Admin, point your cursor at Configuration in the top menu. Choose Layout Settings from the drop down menu.
Find "Main Page - Opens with Category"...
By default, the module comes with support for 3 zones. This can be easily altered with a coding change by editing the Zones Shipping Module file (If you make this change and your Zones module is already installed/active, you'll need to record your settings, then click Remove, then click Install, and re-enter all your settings. Otherwise your change will have peculiar visual side-effects).
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Clin Qual Prog Consultant (Accreditation Consultant)
Description SHIFT: Day JobSCHEDULE: Full-timeYour Talent. Our Vision. At Anthem, Inc., it's a powerful combination, and the foundation upon which we're creating greater access to care for our members, greater value for our customers, and greater health for our communities. Join us and together we will drive the future of health care.This is an exceptional opportunity to do innovative work that means more to you and those we serve at one of America's leading health benefits companies and a Fortune Top 50 Company.Clinical Qual Prog Consultant (Accreditation Consultant) - PS38238Primarily responsible for assisting East Region health plans in achieving NCQA Accreditation. The Clinical Qual Prog Consultant is responsible for serving as a liaison with and overseeing the quality improvement activities and programs for one or more states within a major line of business. Primary duties may include, but are not limited to:
Co-leads state level quality strategy meetings, develops a quality plan, and ensures integration of quality into the overall business process.
Works with the clinical intervention team to design studies to identify barriers to medical interventions.
Ensures that study methodology is sound and appropriate reporting is in place.
Develops performance improvement plans, and oversees the clinical quality improvement activities to improve the quality of care for members.
Assures compliance with corporate Quality Improvement (QI) work plans.
Assures QI activities are relevant to targeted population.
Maintains effective documentation of research programs to meet regulatory and Accreditation Standards.
Oversees accurate and complete quantitative analysis of clinical data and presentation of results.
Requires a BS in health administration, nursing or a related clinical field; 3 years of health care quality or data analysis experience; or any combination of education and experience, which would provide an equivalent background.
Current unrestricted license or certification in applicable field preferred (i.e. CPHQ).
MS in the health field (i.e. Nursing) preferred.
Anthem, Inc. is ranked as one of America's Most Admired Companies among health insurers by Fortune magazine and is a 2018 DiversityInc magazine Top 50 Company for Diversity. To learn more about our company and apply, please visit us at careers.antheminc.com. An Equal Opportunity Employer/Disability/Veteran.REQNUMBER: PS38238


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The Sabian Paragon Crash 17" is a crash cymbal crafted from B20 bronze alloy with a bright sound and medium weight. Designed with Neil Peart to celebrate the Rush R40 40th Anniversary Tour, this medium-gauge crash has a large, volume-boosting bell and offers an explosive response with a wide sound spectrum and a warm frequency mix. Convincing with powerful dynamics, this cymbal is unique with a special "rich gold" colour.
The main features of the Sabian Paragon Crash 17" include:


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Home :: Media :: DVDs & Videos :: Baton Twirling DVDs/Videos
Enter To Win $500!
Send us pictures or videos of our product(s) being worn or used along with the billing name and/or invoice number from when your ordered the product. If your picture or video is used, you will be entered into a drawing for a $500 shopping spree on the website you ordered from! Submissions of pictures for multiple products may get you entered into the drawing multiple times. For each picture or video we use, you will be entered one time. For example, if you send us 5 pictures and we use two of those pictures on the website, then you will be entered twice in the drawing.
To qualify, all entries must be submitted by December 31st. Entries must have purchased the product from Leslie's Best, Inc. and include customer's billing name or order number for verification purposes. By submitting your picture or video, you explicitly grant Leslie's Best full rights to use the submitted picture or video, at no charge, in all Leslie's Best publications worldwide, including affiliated websites, printed documents, PDF files, advertisements, etc. The drawing will be held in January, and is combined between the eWholesaleTiaras.com and DanceCheer.net entries. The winner will be notified via email by February 28th. The winner's information will be posted to this News section by February 28th, and a Spirit Mall newsletter will be sent to all current subscribers at that time.
You may send your photos via our Leslie's Best, Inc. FaceBook page or via the live chat button (located on the right side of most web store pages). Good luck, and thank you for your business!
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The Mojave Desert's dry Ivanpah lake bed shimmers under a vicious solar glare,creating the illusion of water. Piercing the mirage are dozens of sails—a vast array of color streaking over a dusty ocean. It's the last week in March, and Ivanpah is hosting the North American Land Sailing Association's annual dirt-boat championships, the America's Cup. It may seem odd to give this competition the same name as the more famous ocean race, but truth be told, in a strictly technical sense the two America's Cups are quite similar. Dirt sailing is sailing, after all: The tactics are the same; the maneuvers are the same. The main difference, as people who race on dirt are keen to point out, is speed. Sailing on a dry lake is about three times faster than sailing on water.
Then there are the competitors themselves. "There's just something about the desert that attracts strange people," longtime dirt sailor Richard Jenkins says. He would know: Jenkins is the current king of the Dirt Cup, as some call it, having set the world speed record at the competition in 2009, when his land yacht, Greenbird, hit 126.2 miles per hour. "Land sailors are a weird bunch. Oddballs. Alternative in every respect."
Cavallaro knew that a sail on a tack and a spinning propeller blade were aerodynamically the same.
No one here is weirder or more alternative than a mustachioed man who has shown up this year with an exceptionally strange-looking dirt boat and an extraordinary claim. The man, a fast-talking inventor named Rick Cavallaro, says that his craft—Blackbird—can, while sailing directly downwind, go faster than the wind that is propelling it.
Jenkins, like other veterans of the Dirt Cup, thinks this is preposterous. There's no doubt that a boat (dirt or otherwise) can go faster than the wind. That's part of the magic of sailing: By running at an angle to take advantage of crosswind effects, a boat can outpace wind speed. But directly downwind? Impossible. In a best-case scenario, a sailing vessel headed directly downwind will move at the speed of the breeze that's pushing it.
The problem with downwind sailing is that from the perspective of the craft, once it reaches wind speed there is no more wind. And if there is one thing every sailor knows, it's that "you can't power through zero wind," as Jenkins says. Not only would the sailing craft have to somehow pull ahead of the wind that's pushing it, but from the perspective of the sailors on board, it would face what feels like a headwind pushing it back. In sailing, zero wind—real or apparent—is considered an absolute barrier, like the speed of light in physics.
Yet Cavallaro claims that Blackbird can break this barrier. Not only that, he says, it will likely go downwind twice as fast as the wind. The boast is made all the more outlandish by the fact that Blackbird doesn't have anything that looks even remotely like a sail.
The craft is a crude contraption of plywood, carbon fiber, bicycle parts, and pieces of go-cart. It's low and relatively streamlined, except for the 14-foot-high tower mounted behind the cockpit. Attached to this is what can be called—for the sake of argument—Blackbird's sail. Many will choose to call it a giant propeller, because it has two diametrically opposed 8-foot-long blades that rotate just like, well, a giant propeller. But propellers imply motors. Blackbird's rotating propeller-shaped sail is the motor. Cavallaro has connected the prop to wheels via a drivetrain, so the faster the cart rolls, the faster the sail-prop spins, thereby creating a feedback loop that Cavallaro claims will accelerate the cart from a standstill through the zero-wind barrier and beyond.
To most people, Blackbird's engineless drivetrain sounds like a perpetual-motion machine. "Cartoon physics" was typical of the barbs thrown at Cavallaro when he revealed his idea. But he remained undaunted. Blackbird is the result of a years-long quest—a personal attempt to prove something deeply counterintuitive to the world. A software and hardware developer with a degree in aerospace engineering, Cavallaro has done the math. He has made small models and run tests. His contraption will work, he says. Even if no one believes him, he is certain that he's right.
But any sailor worth his salt—or dust, as the case may be—will tell you he's wrong. So will many engineers and physicists. And they're not shy about spelling it out. Since Cavallaro first proposed Blackbird's design on the Internet, his concept has been ridiculed and lampooned in blogs and forums, and the idea has even been refuted in a national magazine. The debate recently reached a fever pitch among a certain type of geek, especially in Silicon Valley, so much so that some notable entrepreneurs, including Google's Larry Page, forked over the cash to let Cavallaro finally build the vehicle. After four years of online arguments, explanations, and insults, Cavallaro has brought his vision here—to the Dirt Cup—to prove he can beat the wind.
This is where the Rube Goldberg rubber hits the hard, flat playa. Cavallaro is suited up in a helmet, goggles, and motorcycle pads. Now all he has to do is make the damn thing work.
He climbs into Blackbird's coffinlike cockpit. His seat is just a hammock that hangs a few inches above the ground. A single front wheel from a BMX bike rests between his feet. There is a rudder in his right hand and a brake under his left foot. Every instrument—every GPS device, every anemometer, every radio—is double-checked to make sure Blackbird's speed will be recorded accurately. The ground crew triple-checks that the craft is pointed directly downwind. When Blackbird is finally ready to roll, Cavallaro pops open the brake.
And nothing happens.
Blackbird started with a brainteaser: Al Alcorn, the Atari engineer famous for giving the world Pong, had a question for his friend Rick Cavallaro, who never met a logic challenge he didn't like.
Could a sailboat outrun a balloon? Alcorn asked. The question is an old sailing stumper, but it was new to Cavallaro, and it pushed his buttons hard.
A Navy brat, Cavallaro was born in Cuba in 1962, the son of a flight surgeon. His father was soon posted to New Jersey, but by the time Rick was 12, the family had moved to Florida, where Cavallaro grew into a thrill-seeking teen. He owned a car before he could legally drive and would later sneak onto a yet-to-be-opened highway to push his Mazda RX-4 up to 135 mph. At 16, he got his pilot's license and started flying Cessnas. Cavallaro was equally into science, largely because an assistant to one of his physics teachers had a Messerschmitt aerobatic plane and would take him up for loop de loops.
It was Borton who finally cracked over the controversy. "Screw it," he said to Cavallaro. "Let's build a big one."
College was at Georgia Tech and grad school at UCLA. After a short stint in Southern California's defense industry, Cavallaro left in 1989 for the more congenial climes of the San Francisco Bay Area. He quickly landed a job at a high tech startup, Etak, helping design a pre-GPS navigation system for cars. After Etak was purchased by News Corp., he joined Sportvision, home of the virtual first-down marker, where he now serves as the company's chief scientist.
Cavallaro's singular obsession, however, has long been the wind. In addition to aircraft, he pilots sailplanes and experimental hang gliders of such radical design that you wouldn't recognize them as hang gliders. "Lately," Cavallaro says, "I've taken up powered paragliding."
This passion, plus a penchant for brainteasers, drew Cavallaro to John Borton, Sportvision's director of manufacturing and a champion glider pilot. Their friendship started as an argument over an aerodynamics riddle that hinged on whether you could know the true direction of the wind while hang gliding without looking at the ground. (You can, though Cavallaro has never fully conceded the point.)
Alcorn's balloon-versus-sailboat question was exactly the type of thing the two loved to mull over and argue about. Both understood that sailboats (and dirt boats and ice boats) can sail faster than the wind. What's more, they understood the physical principles behind the phenomenon, which boil down to lift. Aerodynamically speaking, a sail with wind traveling across it acts like a vertical wing. It will pull a boat forward the same way an airplane wing will pull a fuselage right off a runway. Sails and wings both produce lift, as long as there is wind moving across them. That said, the two men realized that on a direct downwind heading, there is no wind moving across the sail. The sailing speed limit in that case is the speed of the wind.
So to beat a balloon, a sailor must navigate at an angle to the destination, then tack, or turn, the boat back toward the finish line. This downwind zigzag course—jibing, in sailing terminology—is often the fastest way to traverse between points A and B. But given that you have to cover more ground and take the time to turn, is it really fast enough to beat the wind itself (represented by the balloon)?
Answering that question requires factoring in things like drag and angle of attack and using racing-performance data to figure out wind speed multiples for every angle of sail.
Illustration: Mike Bain/based on animation by Heikki Anttila
Of course, you could just skip this and go right to Google. A little research reveals that Steve Fossett's speed-record-smashing yacht, Cheyenne,has the capability—the wind speed multiples and attack angles—to beat a balloon in a downwind race. And Larry Ellison's even faster USA-17 actually jibed its way through a downwind leg of last year's water-based America's Cup with a faster-than-the-wind official time. So yes, Mr. Alcorn, some sailboats can outrun a balloon.
Cavallaro isn't the kind of guy to Google an answer, though. He prefers thought experiments to web searches. And the balloon-versus-sailboat thought experiment he came up with took him to another planet: a cylindrical planet entirely covered by water, with a constant wind blowing down its length. Call it Planet 50-Gallon Barrel and visualize a balloon racing a sailboat from one end to the other.
The advantage of holding a race on this planet is that, because the boat can sail completely around the cylinder, it never has to zag to end up at the same end point as the balloon. Instead, the craft can stay on one continuous crosswind heading and spiral all the way around the barrel, ending up at the finish line. On Planet 50-Gallon Barrel, the math simplifies. But forget the math for a moment and concentrate on the visual picture.
What if the balloon-versus-sailboat race ran down cylindrical planets of smaller and smaller diameters: Planet Telephone Pole? Planet Sewer Line? Planet ABS Pipe? What if the cylindrical planet had no significant diameter: Planet Steel Rod? In that case, the boat would essentially be spinning around its own axis and its sail would suddenly look a lot like a turning propeller blade.
This is the point where a little Blackbird-shaped light bulb flickered on over Cavallaro's head. With his background in aeronautics, he knew that a sail on a downwind tack and the blade of a spinning propeller are aerodynamically the same.
Blackbird's sail-prop-driven design quickly coalesced in Cavallaro's mind. Imagining it, he realized that the crosswind-only caveat to sailing faster than the wind didn't apply to Blackbird. The lift the propellers provided would pull the cart forward, with the wind. That forward motion would feed back into the system through the wheels, which would turn the prop even faster, creating even more lift, or, as it's usually called vis-é-vis a propeller, thrust. The propeller—on its continuous rotational "tack"—would then simply screw itself through the zero wind.
How Blackbird
The best sailing craft can go faster than the wind is blowing, as long as they sail at an angle to the wind. But sailing faster than the wind directly downwind? That was generally considered to be impossible—until Rick Cavallaro came up with a clever thought experiment involving a barrel-shaped planet.
The Basic Science
Thanks to aerodynamic lift—the same effect that lets airplanes fly—a fast boat sailing at an angle to the wind can beat the wind itself. In other words, the boat could outpace a balloon floating across the sky.
The Thought Experiment
What if a boat sailed at an angle down the length of a planet shaped like a barrel? The craft could sail all the way around the planet, eliminating the need to waste time and energy charting a zigzag course.
The Twist
What if you make the planet thinner—the width of a rod. The boat would complete revolutions faster, always staying ahead of the balloon. Of course, the thinner you make the planet, the faster the boat will spin, until…
The Aha! Moment
…the boat essentially becomes a propeller. So, if back on earth you swap a sail for a propeller, a fast boat (OK, a land yacht) should be able to sail directly downwind faster than the wind.
Illustration: Mike Bain/based on animation by Heikki Anttila
Blackbird was Cavallaro's best thought experiment yet! Forget about tacking and sail-efficiency tables and Cheyenne. Here was a wind-powered vehicle that could outrun a balloon in a straightforward race from point A to point B.
Cavallaro realized he had stumbled onto the perfect setup for a new brainteaser. And so, in spring 2006, he started a fresh thread on Runryder.com, a forum for model-helicopter enthusiasts. His post, with the subject line "Annoying Brain Teaser #1," went like this: Can you make a vehicle that goes directly downwind, powered only by the wind, faster than the wind?
The world of brainteasers is a small one. Most people find the idea of being asked to think hard for no good reason to be annoying. But every few years a question tickles our collective smart bone and becomes a breakout hit. The most famous is likely the Monty Hall problem: Suppose you're on a game show and you're given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say Number 1. The host, who knows what's behind all the doors, opens another, say Number 3, which he knows is hiding a goat. He then asks, "Do you want to pick door Number 2?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?
Yes. Switching your choice always raises your odds.1
The brainteaser making the rounds when Cavallaro had his sail-prop epiphany is known as the Airplane on a Treadmill. It goes like this: An airplane taxis in one direction on a moving conveyor belt going the opposite direction and matching the speed of the wheels. Can the plane take off?
Yes. The plane will take off normally.2
The observant will notice a pattern developing here. For a brainteaser to "work," the right answer has to be counterintuitive. It has to seem like the wrong answer. Most people understand this, and they suffer through the I-feel-dumb setup to get to the punch line. In a sense, brainteasers are like knock-knock jokes for the brainy set.
In Cavallaro's mind, his brainteaser, which quickly became known on the Internet as Directly Downwind Faster Than the Wind, or DDWFTTW for short, was no exception. The answer, as he saw it, was yes here, too. You can go DDWFTTW—if you build a Blackbird.
Considered as a brainteaser, however, DDWFTTW has a serious flaw: Almost no one gets it right. And the brain-tease is not truly over until its victims acknowledge that, yes, they were wrong and understand the counterintuitive truth.
When Cavallaro made his big reveal on Runryder and half a dozen other websites, he didn't have Blackbird, or even a model of Blackbird. Instead, he showed everybody how wrong they were with a vehicle made of pure thought, beamed in from an imaginary planet shaped like a cylinder. At which point the Internet spat out a column of flame dozens of websites wide and thousands of comments long. Cavallaro, almost everyone concluded, was an idiot.
"It was a brainteaser," Cavallaro says, shaking his head. "Of course I had the right answer!"
As it happens, others had previously considered making a vehicle with a propeller sail. There's photographic evidence, for example, that a man named Andrew Bauer created a Blackbird-like craft in 1969. And the idea has bubbled up occasionally in sailing circles ever since (most notably in an obscure UK sailing publication called Catalyst). But it wasn't until Cavallaro's fresh brainteaser that the debate roared to life across the broader Internet. And roar it did, with Cavallaro and his few supporters enduring a sustained onslaught by those who said the idea was hogwash.
Eventually the flame war settled into two camps: the proof-of-concept modelmakers versus the disproof-of-concept modelmakers.
Chief among the DDWFTTW debunkers was Make magazine writer (and former Wired contributor) Charles Platt. Responding to the online debates, Platt wrote a story for Make in summer 2007 entitled "The Little Cart That Couldn't." In the article, he detailed his experience piecing together a tabletop model of a DDWFTTW-type car. Total budget: less than $30. Platt shaped his own wooden propeller with a belt sander. A rubber belt connected the prop-shaft to the wheels. When he was done, he sprayed copious amounts of WD-40 on all the moving parts and turned on a powerful fan.
Nothing happened.
Well, almost nothing. After some tweaks, Platt got his cart to move downwind—at about 2 inches per second in a 30-foot-per-second tailwind. "Hopeless," he concluded in Make's August 2007 issue, in which he called the DDWFTTW idea "delusionary."
After reading this, a steamed Cavallaro, with the help of Borton, decided to build a model cart of his own. Unlike Platt, Borton and Cavallaro opted to splurge. They used real bearings to reduce friction on the moving parts and fabricated the rest from lightweight carbon fiber and aluminum. Their propeller was nylon, sourced from a website that specializes in remote-control-airplane parts. And instead of a belt-drive system, they opted for a long driveshaft to connect the wheels at the front end of the cart with the propeller, mounted in back. Despite the myriad differences from Platt's design, the basic premise was the same. When the prop cranked, the wheels spun, and vice versa. All in all, they spent about $40.
Despite the superior construction, come test time even Borton had his doubts. "Truth be told," he says, "I was skeptical we could get it to work. Friction is usually what kills stuff like this." But work it did, and rather nicely. They ran their baby Blackbird on a treadmill to simulate the crucial zero-wind moment, as well as in real-world wind on the street. In both cases, they boasted, the cart broke through zero wind and kept accelerating. They uploaded the videos to YouTube in November 2008. "I was happy to stop right there," Cavallaro says. "We had proven it."
The majority of people who watched the videos, however, disagreed. Many criticized the treadmill test, insisting that the treadmill was propelling the cart. Others found fault in the nature of the real-world wind tests, saying that gusts and turbulence meant the cart wasn't going directly downwind. Rhett Allain, a physicist at Southeastern Louisiana University and a blogger for ScienceBlogs, diagnosed what he called DDWFTTW's "free energy" problem and concluded that "you can't get something for nothing."
The Internet consensus remained that DDWFTTW was not possible. "It wouldn't have bothered me if 5 percent of the people didn't accept our results," Borton says. "But it was more like 99 percent."
Borton finally cracked. A few months later, after stewing over the Platt-inspired drubbing that he and Cavallaro were getting online, Borton came into Cavallaro's office and said, "All right, screw it. Let's build a big one." This time it wasn't going to be a model. "It needed to be huge," Borton decided, because it had to be big enough to carry Cavallaro through the zero-wind barrier.
The pair barnstormed the local universities and sailing clubs looking for free labor and official sponsorship. They made presentations at San Jose State University, Stanford, and the St. Francis Yacht Club in San Francisco. They were asked by a student to speak at UC Berkeley, too, but the head of the school's Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory, Daniel Kammen, rejected Borton and Cavallaro, explaining in an email that DDWFTTW was not possible "due to conservation of energy." Yet their increasing notoriety was good for something: attention. Boing Boing covered the controversy, as did ScienceBlogs' .dotphysics. And so, when Cavallaro began working the phones asking for money, a pair of Silicon Valley bigwigs decided they weren't going to let two of their own be trashed online without a fight. JoeBen Bevirt, inventor of the Gorillapod, wrote out a check for $5,000. Larry Page threw down $10,000 from Google. Everyone wanted to see what Cavallaro and Borton would come up with.
1/ Originally, you had a 1 in 3 chance of guessing the correct door. When Monty shows you the goat behind a door you didn't choose, the probability of a car being behind that door drops to zero and the chance that there's a car behind the third door thus rises to 2 in 3. So your odds improve if you switch your choice.
2/ The plane moves because its engines push air, not because its wheels push against the ground. The wheels on a plane spin freely, so it doesn't matter if the runway is moving against the direction of the plane. The plane will move forward relative to the ground and therefore be able to take off.
Construction took six months and about 2,000 person-hours. Even with the donations, "budget constraints meant that all of it was a hack," Cavallaro says. He pounded together a frame from modified wooden joists, and Borton remachined and repurposed an odd assortment of mountain bike and go-cart parts into a drivetrain. The hardest part was shaping the sail-prop out of a pile of fiberglass cloth, foam, two old carbon-fiber windsurfing masts, two ski poles, and a vat of epoxy.
Blackbird's first run, they decided, would take place at the 2010 Dirt Cup. Despite the excitement, Borton was preparing for disappointment. "If it doesn't work," he told himself "at least we're showing up with something that makes it look like we're serious."
Back on the Mojave playa, it looks as if Borton's nightmare has come true. Cavallaro is suited up and in the cockpit. And nothing is happening.
Well, almost nothing. After 10 excruciatingly long seconds, Blackbird starts to creak and trundle forward. Simultaneously, the craft's outsize propeller starts ever so slowly to sweep a languorous arc, like the second hand of a clock.
Cavallaro's voice crackles over the radio: "Two miles per hour… 3 miles per hour… 4 miles per hour."
Thirty seconds into the speed trial and the handful of curious onlookers can walk faster than Blackbird is "sailing."
"Six… seven… eight," Cavallaro says.
A minute into the test and Blackbird is moving at a jogger's pace.
"Ten… 12 miles per hour…" Cavallaro now has to raise his voice to be heard over the thwomp, thwomp of the propeller spinning ever faster behind him.
At 90 seconds, he has v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y accelerated to 15 mph. That's about sprinting speed, but more important, it's the velocity of the wind today. Blackbird's telltales—little pieces of orange flag tied to the vehicle's various struts and antennas—go limp. The craft has reached the zero-wind barrier.
For a moment everyone holds their breath. Then Blackbird accelerates. Hard.
The telltales reverse direction: They start blowing back toward the rear of the cart. Blackbird has pushed itself past the wind.
On the far side of the mythical barrier, things get weird. Cavallaro feels wind blowing in his face—yet the wind is also propelling him forward at… Cavallaro glances at the GPS-enabled speedometer mounted in the cockpit. The numbers tick up faster than he can report them. "Twenty, no, 22!" He's shouting into the transceiver: "30!"
Running out of playa, Cavallaro hits the brakes. The team immediately backs up Blackbird for another run.
It's on the third run that things go wrong. Blackbird once again powers past the zero-wind point and reaches its highest speed yet. But the view from the chase car reveals an oddity: The dust that Blackbird is raising on its run is coming off of only one of the cart's three wheels, the right rear one. Blackbird is starting to tilt. What's going wrong?
Inside, Cavallaro has this same question, but Blackbird's cockpit is not conducive to deep thought. The sail-prop is spinning so fast that it's inflicting roughly 470 foot-pounds of torque—about the same as the V-8 in a new Corvette ZO6—on a drivetrain made of bicycle parts. The prop's rapid thwop-ing has morphed into a beating, pulsing thwap! thwap! thwap! Everything is shaking.
Cavallaro feels his starboard wheel lift with every thwap! and realizes that he never properly considered the rotational effects of the propeller's torque at these higher-than-expected speeds. That's a problem, because if Blackbird flips, decapitation is a real possibility.
Cavallaro, head still attached, leans on the brake. He's alive, but the chain, rotating the prop faster than it was ever designed to go, has ripped the sprocket right out of the drivetrain. "Too much horsepower," he says, laughing. Slowly he rolls to a stop from a top speed of 46 mph.
The sprocket is pretzeled, but there is no doubt about what Blackbird has achieved.
The Land Sailing Association doesn't consider the run official—largely because it has no official DDWFTTW race category. But after repairing Blackbird, Cavallaro and Borton will return to log their feat in a newly created land-sailing category. Four months later, on July 2, 2010, the association officially documents Blackbird's performance, recording 27.7 mph in a 10 mph wind. Not as quick as those first three runs, but conclusively faster than the wind.
Cavallaro and Borton did the "impossible" with Blackbird, and they did it in front of skeptics, whom they then asked to confirm and check their achievement. What started as a gotcha game that convinced almost no one turned into an arduous DIY demonstration that hewed to the scientific method. The reward for all their efforts? A new mark in the record book, sure. But even better: changing people's minds.
The first skeptic to flip was land-sailor Richard Jenkins, who, after watching the official record-setting runs, was compelled to blog about Blackbird. "It works," he wrote. "It starts from rest, trundles to true wind speed, then powers to a multiple of about three times the true wind speed." Jenkins went so far as to call Cavallaro and Borton "sincere, genuine, technical people, who took a myth and made it real."
Cavallaro and Borton's victory tour took them to Science Foo Camp 2010, an invite-only "un-conference" by and for the geek elite. It's held every summer at the Googleplex, Google's headquarters in Mountain View. This is Cavallaro and Borton's kind of crowd, and after the duo gave their DDWFTTW presentation, they were feted as heroes. Larry Page personally drew them aside for a tête-à-tête-à-tête about other possible uses for the technology. He noted that there have already been some promising experiments using traction kites on cargo ships. Why not a propeller? Cavallaro and Borton love the idea and have estimated that installing DDWFTTW technology on a cargo ship would save 7 to 10 percent of its fuel cost—or about $100,000—per Pacific crossing.
Even Make magazine came around. In November, editor in chief Mark Frauenfelder published a long mea culpa on the Make blog, which explained how Make got it wrong. Cavallaro was invited to write a piece entitled "The Little Cart That Did." And with that, the tide of Internet opinion turned decisively.
To be sure, there are the stubborn few who aren't convinced. As of this writing, Platt is still skeptical. "I think Rick Cavallaro is probably sincere," Platt writes. "But sincere people may be victims of self-deception." Another holdout is Allain, the Southeastern Louisiana physics professor (who, it should be noted, now blogs for Wired.com's Wired Science network).
Platt still can't see how what happened can be possible, so he won't yet admit he got it wrong. Instead, Platt remains fixated on the discourtesy he feels that the pro-DDWFTTW crowd showed him on the Make blog after his original article called on them to "face facts and admit that it doesn't work." Allain, on the other hand, prefers to turn the tables, asking, "Why are all the downwinders so anxious for me to say it works? If it works, does it matter what I say?"
He's got a point, and indeed Cavallaro and Borton have moved on. In fact, they've come up with a brand-new brainteaser for the world to chew on: Can you make a vehicle that goes directly upwind, powered only by the wind, faster than the wind?
Adam Fisher (email@example.com) is a former Wired senior editor.Go Back to Top. Skip To: Start of Article.


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Hunter Safety Course In Glades County
MOORE HAVEN, FL. -- The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) will host a free hunter safety course on July 26, from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. in Glades County.
Participants must successfully complete the online portion of the course prior to attending and bring the final Web report to the FWC course on July 26. The form does not have to be notarized.
Students will learn about several topics, including hunting laws, safe gun handling and hunter ethics/responsibility before taking the final test. The course also includes live-firing instruction on a shooting range.
The class will be held at the Glades County Sheriff's Office Shooting Range, located at 1019 Gun Club Road, Moore Haven.
Participants can sign up at MyFWC.com/HunterSafety or by calling the FWC's South Region Office at 561-625-5122. Links to the online portion of the course and a statewide schedule of hunter safety classes are available atMyFWC.com/HunterSafety.
Parents or legal guardians must accompany children under 16 years of age to all classes. To participate in live-fire exercises, children under 18 years old must present a parental release form signed by a parent or legal guardian.
Anyone born on or after June 1, 1975, must pass an approved hunter safety course and have a hunting license to hunt alone (unsupervised).